


Companions of Necessity

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Category: Alien vs Predator (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death Fix, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-05
Updated: 2009-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:12:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the opening to how Scar and Alexa forge their relationship after leaving Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Companions of Necessity

//Drown, you bitch... drown.// Her pulse hammered as she watched the place in the ice the queen had fallen through, praying she didn't somehow free herself... after long, long moments when no flared head or claws came back to the surface, Lexa turned away from the water, moving over the ice to go back to the Hunter's side. 

He was... growling? weakly as she came close, and she dropped down on her knees beside him. Her arm hurt from the places where the queen's blood had hit it, and she could barely believe the snow-bank she'd shoved her arm into had kept it from eating deeper... but it was a distant kind of ache as she looked at her hunter-turned-partner, seeing the extent of the damage. 

He could feel the spawn inside him. He knew his own life was seeping from the wound made by the hard-meat queen's tail. The human, the brave not-fighter/survivor woman, did not have the right eyes to see the spawn, though she was there with him. He had to survive, and he had none of her words to tell her the danger. So he fought now, fought to still his body, to slow everything to near-death, to survive until the clan-ship and the elders arrived. He looked at her, this survivor-human with his mark, and tried to tell her, turning his hand up, calling weakly to her to be patient. If only she understood, as she had inside the pyramid, what he wanted, needed.

Lexa shook her head as he growled, and heard herself say, "Sssh..." before she knew she was speaking. He was too hurt to be trying to talk--if that was really talking... She moved to take his hand, cupping it in hers as she wondered what she could possibly do to even try to save him--if she even wanted to save him. He had killed part of her team--the team she'd signed on to protect ("I never leave my team"... the thought burned); had lured them all into that god-forsaken death-trap of a pyramid... but he'd fought for her, too. He'd come back for her against the queen, had protected her on their way out of the pyramid, thrown her across the crumbling ice when she would have fallen and died...

The feeling of the Spawn inside his chest made him wince, a low rumble of concern escaping him as he pulled his other arm in, hand trying to go over the thing. The elders would be there soon; they always came when the detonation took place, to be sure all was secure.

"What? What is it?" Lexa reached out with one hand, the other still cupping his huge hand in hers, her fingers resting over his hand. There was dark stuff in his--//was it a he? What did that matter?//--mouth as he breathed... that couldn't be good. Trying to imagine the kind of pain that gut-wound had to be giving him made her own body try to cramp--but his hand was pressed higher than the wound... Why?

Could this human understand? She had understood the bomb so well. His mandibles flexed wide, as he made a hissing noise at her, mimicking the sound of their hard-meat prey perfectly.

She reared back for a moment, startled at the chittering-hissing noise so unlike the quiet purr or even the roar of his anger--it sounded like... like the things they'd killed, the 'serpents'... Why woul--understanding struck almost as she started to phrase the question and she jerked her hand back, feeling her pulse in her throat and against her ribs... 

"No. No." She shook her head, denying the possibility. He couldn't... couldn't have one of those things in him. He'd been with her longer than--longer than Sebastian had been taken, he would already have...

His head moved slightly to one side, holding on for consciousness, and for control of his body. He let a low purr come out, to try and reassure her, before his gaze focused in the other direction, sensing the cloaks of his kind.

She looked that direction, fear an acid in the back of her throat as she hoped she was wrong. The gun was gone in the blast below, her spear had gone with the queen, his throwing-thing (death-frisbee, a hysterical voice in the back of her mind said, laughing) was who-knew where... The knife? Was it-- 

It was still there, in the boot closest to her... but... could she do that? Even to the scarred Hunter laying there, bleeding out? She hated guns, but it had been the only merciful thing to do for... for Sebastian, and there'd been distance... But if she had the knife, she'd have to be right there, feel it sink into his flesh...

He started to voice a greeting to the elders, one that would warn, and also tell them of the woman not being prey, that she was his kill-partner, had killed two of the drones herself and helped him engineer the Queen's death, but... consciousness was too fuzzy around the edges in the weak air of this world, and he could hold on no more.

The elders shimmered into view, noting the way the human was there with the newly-blooded Hunter willingly. The strangeness stayed them from an immediate kill, curious about the happening when the pyramid-temple had been destroyed. The plasma blast had blinded their own sensors for whole minutes. They had believed all dead below until the sensors cleared and they had seen the forms of their Hunter and the female on the thick ice.

She looked up at the change in the air, and stared at the big Hunter right there... it was colored differently, had so many more spikes at its temples , down its face... //old?// She held on to the hand in her lap, and tried to make herself calm down again. "Do you understand me better than he did?" ...Maybe I won't have to-- She pushed the thought away and stared up at the elder, shaking the hair out of her face with a toss of her head.

The elder noted the headtoss, the common motion of defiance among the humans, if he remembered correctly. She was holding onto the young Hunter, but the elder did not think worship still remained among the humans. It had been lost to those on the last ritual hunt here, after all. Her words sounded questioning, or so he thought. It had been a long time, even for him, since his clan had used this hunting ground to prove their young. He turned his head down in a sideways cock, to encourage more words.

//He doesn't...// She looked up at the elder, and held on to the scarred one's hand. //Scar would work for a name, with all of these around-- Miming. Miming worked to talk to him...// She tried to mimic that same hissing noise, then pushed her hand over Scar's chest, tapping. "He has one... I think he has one. In him. Here." She curved her fingers, tapping at the plate of the armor there, then looked back up at the elder.

The elder made a quick hiss and motion, and one of the honor guards came forward, still helmeted, to inspect the fallen one. 

[He lives...and there is a spawn inside.] The guard reached for his spear, half reluctant, as the young one was a needed addition to their ranks, if he had survived the mass-carnage they had witnessed from the ship.

Lexa tensed as the other one reached for the collapsed spear--didn't they have some better way than just killing him, when he'd tried so hard all alone...? They had spaceships, there had to be something smarter than that they could do!

[No.] The elder had the same thoughts, and knelt beside the fallen Hunter, clawed hand probing the wound left by a tail-spike... A spike bigger than any drone's should have been... [Inside...remove it. This hunt-trap is lost; we need his observations if he survives the removal.]

He stood and moved back, clearing the way, thinking about the Queen they had seen free itself. Had it survived the blast?

The other three honor guards moved in, surrounding Lexa and the young Hunter.

Surrounded by them, Lexa's shoulders tightened and she went to her feet, only letting go of his hand as she had to, feeling herself shudder in the cold. //Oh, yes... just the cold. That these things killed--or got killed--your entire team has nothing to do with why you're shaking...// 

"Can you save him?" she asked, despite knowing the old one wouldn't understand her. //Why do you care?! You're never going to make it back to the ship alive anyway!//

The elder looked at the human again, noting the way the young Hunter's mark was fresh on her cheek. He looked out across the expanse of the ice, back at her, and her lack of provisions. He could not, in honor, kill her as prey; she was marked as their own. To leave her to survive, knowing she could not, was almost equally dishonoring.

[You will die, or you can come.] The words were both growl and purr, before he turned to return inside his ship with the now lifted Hunter.

She looked back over her shoulder, seeing nothing but rubble, the unending sweep of the ice, the one vehicle left... but even if she could coax it back across the ice to the ship.. What would she say? What could she say that they would possibly believe, or understand? They'd lock her up, or blame her for the deaths--she'd signed on to protect them! To keep them safe... and she'd failed. There was no way she could go back. She couldn't face that, or the accusations of insanity, that they would lock her up to 'keep her safe'... 

Or worse, if they believed her, believed that there were aliens on earth that came to hunt and kill them, use them-- 

That wasn't worth thinking about, and her own words earlier echoed in her mind "I'm going with you, you hear me, you big ugly creature?!" 

...He was ugly, she'd been right about that, but he had softer eyes than she would have believed possible... And she was terrified of being in the middle of a whole pack of them, especially with him--Scar--probably dying... But what choice did she really have, if she didn't want to die? She took a deep, hard breath, and hoped that purring growl meant what she thought it had as she caught up to the one wearing the cape, the old one. 

He glanced sideways at her, for just a moment, and a throaty rumble escaped him in acceptance, before he followed the fallen Hunter to see to removing the spawn. Convenient that the hard-meat prey had provided them just the right opening to do it, too. 

Lexa looked away as that clawed hand dug into Scar's chest, but if it got that awful thing out of him... She kept her head turned away until she couldn't hear the wet noise of the claws moving any more, trying to breathe in the swirling, heavier air inside this ship--//I'm in a spaceship, with a bunch of aliens that probably still think of people as cattle... I really wish I thought this was a dream.// She stared out the port behind them, seeing the earth rapidly shrinking, dwindling until it was smaller than the satellite images she'd seen... 

Once the spawn was removed, the elder saw to patching the worst of their young hunter's wounds, sealing the internal damage first, and working out. 

He did remember that humans got sick on their air, after a time, and told one of the younger ones to fix the matter for her, even as he studied the result of a spawn from one of their own. The young Hunter would live to take his name of adulthood, if only by sheer stubbornness, it seemed, and the elder's curiosity would be satisfied.

As the earth faded into nothingness behind her, Lexa let herself drop against the table the others had laid Scar on, sliding down it to the ground even though the mist was heavier there, too faint to do anything else--and jerked away as an unmasked Hunter came very close. There was a mask in its hand, but too small to belong to it... It made a noise at her, more purr than snarl--she thought, at least; and pushed the mask forward at her. 

//...what? why?// She reached up to take it and brought it in against her face. She couldn't see, now, not really, but pure, rich oxygen filled her lungs, and after a few minutes, she could think straight again, and realize what she was feeling. 

//That... that feels like... too much nitrogen... Oh, please don't let me go through a pressure change...// The thought of the bends terrified her, given that she doubted she could make any of them understand. 

The mask regulated after a moment, filtering the air to human specifics, and the young hunter left her there, utterly unconcerned with this prey-turned-hunter, or its fate.

The elder was not pleased at all to see the adaptation of the spawn that included the mandibles of his own race over the jaw within a jaw of the hard-meat prey. He was just as glad this thing had not been allowed to mature, but he would pass word on to the others of his clan and their allies.

Lexa slowly adjusted to the green of the mask's eye-pieces, and looked up at the old one, trying to push herself back to her feet. It had something in its hands... what was that?

The elder looked at the small human, and held the broken spawn toward her, showing her the face structure. 

"Yuck!" the word echoed inside the mask, and she shuddered at the sight of something that looked half like the Hunters, and half like the 'serpents' they'd killed. "That's awful..."

The elder could detect the disgust; the words of the humans had always shown their emotions so clearly. [Worthy prey, maybe, but not at the expense of sacrificing Hunters.]

"...I have no idea what you're saying... but with the way you broke that thing's neck, I think you agree with me..." She turned to look back at Scar, slowly remembering what it had been like to use NVGs. This green stuff was a lot like that, and she could see that the wound from the tail-spike wasn't gaping open any more. She touched over it, lightly... and relaxed, just a little, when she felt the rise and fall of breath under her hand.

The elder left them that way, knowing the young Hunter would be unconscious for a longer time than he cared to wait.

She wasn't sure she liked being alone any better than she had liked being with the old one, but... alone was apparently something she was going to have to get used to--and it was something she was familiar with. She did her best climbs alone, after all.

`~`~`~`~`

Lexa had long since sunk back down into the thicker vapors on the floor, tired from standing too long, and bored into the nearest thing to a stupor from the lack of anything but the slow rise and fall of Scar's chest to see. She was half-dozing against the frame of the table, with no real way to tell how long it had been since she'd made possibly the stupidest decision of her life and followed him onto this ship.

Scar, feeling the pain from his wounds, knew he was not alone, but the smell was not of his clan. He opened his eyes, breathing deeply of the thicker air. His senses filtered through everything, until he could tell it was the human... The one that had set herself apart from the others. In working with him, she had elevated herself, made him feel responsible for her... and here she was, on his clan-ship. It was enough to make him try and shift, to see how she was coping with the richer air.

The noise of the armor rattling was enough to bring her out of the doze and she tried to get to her feet, hand on the table to help herself up. Once she was standing, she looked down at him, seeing in the shades of green that he really was awake... "Hi..."

Scar took in the mask, fitted to her small, oddly shaped face. He nodded approvingly, as it did take away some of her more alien appearance. That was good; it would help her.

"What?" she questioned at the nod, looking at him with her head cocked to the side.

He wondered how they would work through the language, even as he gestured up at her hidden face, mandibles stretching wide in approval.

"The mask?" she touched it, tipping her head to the side at him, and waited for a moment, then nodded. "Someone brought it for me."

He listened to her words, but he did not feel like he could force himself to do the prey-mimic, not right now. Instead, he tried to push up, so he could see his injuries.

She moved quickly, catching his shoulders to keep him down, shaking her head. "You're hurt, stay down!"

He hissed at her, a lower sound than the Hard Meat prey, and glared, but the pressure to lay back was easier to cave to than to fight the roiling in his guts at trying to raise up.

Once she was sure he was actually going to stay still, she let go of his shoulders and moved back a little, crossing her arms low over her chest--trying to pretend he hadn't frightened her with that hiss, taking a long, slow breath of the pure air to ease her nerves. "Just... stay down, all right? You're lucky you're not dead."

He followed her motion, and used his hand to explore the gut wound. It was filled in, sealed with their medicines, but very tender to the touch.

"Oh, you're definitely male," she muttered under her breath--only men were that stupid about injuries, in her experience. The thought called up memories of her father, and far more recent ones of Weyland, and she tried to force both away.

The tones she used sounded harsh, so he growled her way.

She crossed her arms tighter and threw her head back, glaring at him. It might push one of them into trying to kill her at some point, but she wasn't about to let him--or any of them--make her afraid any more. Not when he was the only pers--crea--being on this ship that knew her at all.

The sound that emerged from his throat was a purr. Not the hunting sound that had chilled humans since before man was civilized, but a pleased sound. If this human was here with him, she needed to show that strength he had seen.

That was probably the calmest noise she had heard come out of his mouth yet, and all because she wouldn't back down from him? ...Oh, this made no sense whatsoever. But she moved back to him, laying one of her hands on his, lightly.

[Not weak, and controlling your fear...no place among prey,] he told her in his own language.

Those sounds had pattern, rhythm, they were language, she just knew it, but she had no way to understand it, and she swallowed hard, hand tightening on his. "I wish I understood you..."

He looked at her hand, so small in comparison. He could crush every bone in her... if he could get past her natural skill at defense. She intrigued him; the other humans had been prey, as she had seemed even in offering him the plasma blaster, but her strength had shown in dealing with the drones. He had acknowledged her as a hunter, sharing his mark, and that made him responsible for her to the clan.

She watched his face, so alien... but expressive in ways she could understand, most of the time, and wondered what he was thinking.

[You will have to learn. Survive. I will teach you. And we will hunt.] He had decided it all, for his name would be said through the clans. He, and this human, had killed a Queen, with no more than melee weapons at hand. That was something that had never been done, and he would see it was known. It would bring him, both of them, such fame... 

"I'm glad you know what you're saying, because I don't..."

His hand curled around hers, closing as his eyes did, showing that he accepted her presence by trusting her in his weakened state.

"That's 'don't leave', huh? Okay. I'll stay." //Not like I have a whole lot of choice...// She really wasn't willing to test the old one's patience by wandering around out there.

To her words, Scar merely made a soft purr, and decided resting really was best, if he was going to heal quickly. 

She stood there for a while, watching as he went back to sleep, and left her hand resting on his arm as she settled down against the table again. She probably wasn't going to sleep, but she could at least rest. 

`~`~`~`~`

The elder came in a short time later, and Scar did sit up, only barely hunching around the healing hole in his guts, his breathing slightly labored. They exchanged a greeting, and then the elder started questioning Scar about the events after the bomb exploded.

Lexa's mouth tightened as she watched him sit up, but he seemed to do okay with that, so she stayed quiet, leaning back against the table, her eyes up on the elder's face. The quick exchanges of growls, hisses, and clicking noises were definitely language, and she missed Sebastian dreadfully for a moment, wishing he could hear this... but she wouldn't have brought him into this insanity for anything. She listened to it, intently, wishing she had any idea what the two of them were saying. But it didn't seem to be about her... 

Just as the thought crossed her mind, the elder looked her way, mandibles flexing wide and then shut again in pretty evident surprise. The elder then walked close, his eyes appraising Lexa intently. Scar continued to speak, and then reached out, touching one sharp claw to where the mark would be under her mask.

She reached up and unsealed the mask, holding her breath against the nitrogen-heavy air, and tipped her face to the side, showing the fresh mark to the elder, then sealed the mask back up again. 

The elder nodded sharply, then made a few more remarks at Scar, who stiffened, before that hand went down to the arm closest to him, closing on it firmly. This seemed to satisfy the elder, who left them then.

"What was that all about?" Lexa asked, tipping her head to the side. 

Scar mimicked her in the other direction. "Keep it together," he said in the distorted mimicry of her voice, trying to make her understand.

"...We stay together?" Lexa asked, still disturbed by what was basically the sound of her own voice coming from his mouth, but... he was certainly acting like she was right. The way he'd taken her arm... 

He nodded, patting at the remnants of their armor, then touching his scar. He pointed to his mouth, then where hers would be, and mimed things coming out of them, trying to get her to understand she needed to learn the right language. 

She looked at that for a minute, then shook her head, "I don't know if I can make those sounds..." She tried, carefully, to approximate the purring noise he made. 

Scar leaned his head back from the noise, then emitted what sounded a lot like the laugh he'd made when she jumped from the twitching alien drone.

She threw her head back to glare at him, her eyes sparking. "Don't you laugh at me!"

Scar growled at her in turn, but the twitch of his mandibles, if she was reading him right, indicated pleasure, not anger.

"Would you lay back down? You're still hurt." She reached to press at his shoulder again, carefully. 

That earned a snarl, as he looked intently to one side of the room. He levered his bulk up, swaying a little, and steadfastly moved in that direction.

"What are you do--Oh, here. Lean on me, at least..." She tucked herself under his arm, hand finding a place on his armor to hold.

He purred, finding the support of such a small Hunter rather interesting, but necessary at this point. He touched a panel, and it showed a small room with a basin and a...that had to be a toilet, and apparently Scar needed it as he worked at the fastening of his loincloth.

//Oh, thank you god.// Her bladder picked that moment to remind her, very intently, that it had been a long time since she'd been in the head, too. She turned her eyes away, still supporting him, and ignored him as easily as she'd ignored the men on any of her trips. 

He finished his business, using the basin to clean some of the dried blood off his arm, ignoring her presence in his own way.

She looked that way once she heard water running and stayed still, part of his weight over her shoulders, as he worked at cleaning up. "Scar? Can you stay up, if I let go?"

He grunted, looking at her, before he purposefully shifted to rest his good arm on the bulkhead for support.

She worked at stripping out of enough of the coveralls to use the toilet, almost sighing in relief. 

Scar saw to using the time to get clean, as much as he could on the limited water supply of the basin. He'd rather be back in his quarters, where he had a sonic cabinet, but that walk would have to wait another day. 

Once she finished and was dressed again, she moved over close to the basin, watching the water--it looked like plain, ordinary water, and she wasn't entirely sure why that surprised her so much--for a few moments before she unsealed the mask again and cupped one of her hands under the faucet, then brought it to her mouth to taste. It tasted like water, too, and she took a long drink, then another, bringing her hand to her mouth over and over again. Breathing the nitrogen was an acceptable risk to keep her from dehydrating any worse. 

He watched her, and grunted softly. He would need to feed his human, and that reminded him he had not eaten since landfall. He lurched away from the small refresher closet and went to look for a ration kit.

She leaned in when he moved away and made the space for her to, and drank deeper, until she finally decided she'd had enough, at least for now, and sealed the mask up against her face to go see what he had gotten himself into. 

The large alien hunter had managed to get himself back on the medical table, sitting, and had several packets open before him, dividing them into two separate sections.

"What are you doing?" she cocked her head, and came to sit on the edge of the table, watching him. 

He caught the question pose, and picked up a small piece of dried meat, bringing it to his lips to eat.

"Can I eat that?" she reached out, then unfastened the mask again, setting it on the table, before she took a piece of whatever-that-was to study it. Some kind of dried meat, it looked like... //Dried with who-knows-what, and this would have been a smart thing to think of before you trailed the alien onto his ship, Lexa! Not only might you get god-only-knows what alien diseases, but if you can't eat their food, you're either going to poison yourself or starve to death! Oh, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.//

He pushed her hand toward her mouth, with a low purr. [Safe for us. Safe for most with stomachs and two legs, two arms.]

//He thinks I can eat it... (and he knows that how?)// "If you say so, Scar..." she sighed, and took a small bite, carefully. She chewed on it thoughtfully for a moment, and decided that it wasn't too bad... at least in taste. The taste reminded her she really was hungry, and she took another bite, working to separate the tough meat into small enough portions for her to chew on. His teeth were a lot sharper than hers were, after all. 

He nodded, and made sure that the foods in her section were the ones that generally didn't make other walkers and tool-users sick. He chewed on his own portion, working at the meal in small doses, having no wish to be ill on top of injured.

She sat beside him and ate--quickly, so that she didn't have to breathe this air as long; and about the time she was finishing, the complete surreality of the scene struck her, making her want, so very badly, to laugh. To just give in to the hysterical notion that she was sitting in an alien spaceship having dinner with a giant hunter that would have apparently been fine with killing her like the rest had the rest of her team, or leaving her to be used by one of those awful 'serpents' to hatch better prey for him to hunt... but she fought it back. That was likely to be taken as some kind of weakness, and she already knew that would be dangerous. 

He watched her, eyes straying over her face and body as he tried to decipher her meanings. Sign language was known in his people; they used it for silent hunting, on worlds where their own tongue had become too recognized. He thought, possibly, that he could make her understand. 

She managed to get the last shake of her shoulders under control, decided she'd eaten enough, and sealed the mask back up over her face, taking another breath of the cleaner air. "Oh... that feels better, now that I'm not so hungry..." She sighed in relief, and studied him again.

He carefully sealed the remains of the meal in two separate bags, the air puffing out quickly. He reached toward her with hers, attaching it to a bit of armor with a tether.

"For later, huh? Okay." She patted the bag, making sure it would stay, and drew her legs up onto the table, crossing them to sit more easily. 

He shifted, making sure there was room for her, while he settled to sleep more. He let out a low purr, satisfied that he had fed his human and she had started understanding some of what he said.

The air was thinner up here, better, and she let herself curl up, too. More sleep was definitely the better option, when her only other... diversion... would probably turn into wondering just what the hell she'd been thinking when she climbed on here. Yeah... sleep was definitely the better idea.

When she curled, he reached down, hand resting just beside her head, so she could wake him easier if needed.

She looked up at his hand, up his body at him, and reached up to lay her fingers over his, pillowing her head on her other hand. Not much of a pillow, but better than nothing, and the metallic-stone hardness of the table.

He purred again, before falling toward sleep, and healing.

`~`~`~`~`


End file.
